Hope and a prayer needed

Well my bloglets,

Less than a week since I last wrote and I feel that I have come full circle.  On Monday after submitting two essays and having a wonderful cancerversary, I felt happy and light and relieved.  I didn't realise quite how tense, that's not the right word, but how much of an impact my cancerversary has.  This is not to say I will not celebrate and acknowledge it.  It is too much of a major day to have pass by without recognising it.  And maybe as time carries on, the reality of being able to replace it with a day that I celebrate as the day I came off treatment is fading as a reality, as a hope.  I don't know.  My check-up is in a couple of weeks.

I have allowed myself a few days off and to relax.  So today, I feel fucking exhausted, as I did yesterday.  I have been carrying myself forward with so much stress, adrenalin and caffeine, I feel utterly spent.  I need to do some work but it can wait.  A not good result today has upset me, but not as much as the fucking harsh feedback which I am going to flag with the University.  Just because the essay does not seem good to the marker does not mean no effort was put in.  And I am struggling at the moment.  I know I can't have extra marks but it would be nice if the fact that I am doing a fucking stupidly intense degree whilst on fucking chemotherapy would be acknowledged rather than told that the essay was obviously rushed.  I feel like telling the marker to write the essay with no guidance at all from the module staff, do other work alongside including treating patients and having chronic fatigue and see how fucking well they do.  Twat.  It's moments like this when I think fuck it.  I'll drop out.  Give a shit.  Why should I feel like this about myself?  It doesn't do me any good.

Yesterday I decided to come home for the weekend.  The realisation of exhaustion hit me and home was all I needed.  I have also found out a wonderful friend of mine is suddenly really quite ill – the latest scan shows the cancer has spread from a couple of tumours in his brain to all over.  Fucking cancer.  I'm not massively religious, more spiritual, but I am praying for him and ask that you will too.  I don't know if he reads this, or if his wife does, but the admiration I have for them cannot be put into words.  And another friends mother is awaiting surgery. Cancer is everywhere at the moment and it would be quite nice if it fucked off.  I am so lucky to be here but the guilt sometimes is overwhelming.  Guilt that I am ok when others aren't, guilt at the cost of my drugs, guilt that I whinge when I am fine.  This is not going to kill me.  The side effects yes, are a bit shit. Chemo plague is in full force at the moment.  But really.  What right do I have?

My throat is so tight at the moment, I will process this and let go - as I should of my marks.  I want a 2.1, but does it really matter? One of my lovely twitter lot writes about hope.  They have faced adversity but do it so gracefully.  In a much better way than I do…  Hope is needed at the moment.  Maybe I will get that tattoo I have talked about for 10 years, and it will say hope.  I carry it with me always, even if it sometimes gets hidden behind a cloud.

And so I go, focusing on hope.

XXX